


Mist and Shadow

by autobotscoutriella



Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Memory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-17 20:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19962700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autobotscoutriella/pseuds/autobotscoutriella
Summary: People say that time mists over even the most painful memories. Blackarachnia knows better.





	Mist and Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for the prompt "hindsight" on [FandomWeekly](https://fandomweekly.dreamwidth.org/237292.html).

Once, she had spent time actively honing her already-excellent memory. She’d been regarded highly for it at the Academy, and she had just _known_ it would come in handy one day when she was in the Elite Guard, or leading her own research team off-planet. It meant that her power copying was almost perfect—she could remember what she’d seen and imitate it, skipping straight past the normal need to train in a million different tactics. She had been so proud of her own ability to remember.

Now, Blackarachnia could only wish that she had considered the downsides of vivid long-term memories.

No one, except her, knew precisely what had happened on Archa-7. After retrieving her from the crashed ship, her new Decepticon comrades had never pressed for details, perhaps out of consideration, more likely out of a well-developed sense of self-preservation. She had never volunteered the information. They knew what they needed to know, and anyone who tried to pry further deserved the reaction they got.

She would have preferred the option to erase it from her own memories as well. But by the time she was settling into her new faction, it was out of the question. She had no way of doing it herself, and no one in the Decepticons she would trust with it.

Some parts of her unwilling transformation were mercifully vague. The process of merging Cybertronian technology with organic matter had put a horrifying amount of stress on her spark, blurring the actual event in her memories. But other parts were horribly clear.

Terror slamming into her spark like a physical blow as she realized she was falling, and she had no hope of catching herself.

The echo of her own voice shrieking for help—and the silence that told her, no matter how much she didn’t want to believe it, that she had been abandoned to her fate.

That first awful glimpse of her new frame, twisted and reforged in ways the AllSpark never intended, with new hybrid systems she barely understood and could not control.

After a few years, the memories stung less, but they never quite went away. She had learned to work late into the night, pushing her experiments to the logical and illogical limit in an effort to distract herself from the images burned into her processor. She taught herself new combat strategies, using the new systems and learning as she went. If she could force her new hybrid frame to work for her, perhaps the memories of how she got it would fade.

They did not. She vaguely remembered some old Cybertronian poem about the mists of time healing all, and mocked it viciously whenever the thought crossed her processor. The memories had not misted over in the slightest.

If only she could go back in time and undo the effort she had put into remembering everything, noting every little detail of every environment. Those little details still made it feel real—the smells of dust and ancient long-burned fuel and unidentifiable alien substances, the relative hardness and weight of the stone under her feet, the heat of the alien sun on her neck and the instant cooling effect of stepping into the old ship.

And of course, the exact shape and color of each spider. They weren’t as identical as they had appeared. She would have given anything to not know that.

If only she had _listened_ to that little voice that said it was never a good idea to follow Sentinel and Optimus anywhere. If only she had embraced her role as the voice of common sense, for once.

(It had been a joke, once. “Lighten up, you sound like someone’s grumpy caretaker—” “Well, someone has to be the brains around here.” If only she’d followed through.)

She learned to work from the shadows, like the spiders had. She remembered how they had moved, the way they had appeared from nowhere, the speed of the attack, the perfect stillness that made them invisible in the darkness. As much as she hated the memories, the model served her well. She learned to disappear anywhere, at any time, and to move faster than she ever would have needed to in the Elite Guard.

The first time she caught herself feeling comfortable with the alien movements, she fled back to her lab and locked herself in with her thoughts and memories for a week. When she emerged, it was with a new edge in her tone, and if she gritted her teeth through the movements, no one could tell.

Her excellent memory still proved useful. She could memorize any map, locate any planet without having to check the coordinates twice, use her power-copy ability on any mech she pleased even if she had only seen them in action once. The Decepticons did not always trust her—and who would? She didn’t trust them either—but her memory never steered them wrong. It was as useful for a researcher and a strategist as she’d always dreamed.

But she would have given up that usefulness in a sparkbeat, if it meant that the other memories went with it.

She couldn’t make it happen, of course. No one could. But when memories rose out of the shadows and threatened to choke her, she imagined that just for a moment, she could mist them all over, block them all out, make an end of them once and for all.


End file.
